Straws in the Wind - Part 389

From Inside Higher Ed: The already-small number of colleges with full-fledged, student-enforced honor codes is dwindling. After a three-year pilot of proctored exams, Stanford University student, faculty and administrative leaders decided in April that the university will allow proctoring for all in-person tests starting in September. Princeton University faculty approved a similar plan a month later. In making those decisions, both institutions grappled with students’ increasing use—sanctioned and not—of artificial intelligence.

AI is at the “forefront” of honor code reform, said JT Torres, director of the Houston H. Harte Center for Teaching and Learning at Washington and Lee University... A typical honor code asks students to adhere to a set of academic integrity and behavioral standards that prohibit acts like cheating, plagiarism, lying and stealing, and enlists students as the enforcers of those standards. The code only works as well as the students who enforce it, and success relies on students’ desire to adhere to social norms...

According to a 2025 Inside Higher Ed survey of more than 1,000 students, 85 percent had used generative AI to complete coursework. Over half—55 percent—said they used it for brainstorming ideas, 44 percent used it to edit or check their work, a quarter used AI to complete assignments or coding work, and 19 percent used it to write free responses or essays. What types of AI use constitute cheating vary by institution, professor, class and assignment, and that makes it difficult for students to parse what constitutes an honor code violation...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty/learning-assessment/2026/06/22/can-and-should-honor-codes-survive-ai-age.

Straws in the Wind - Part 383

From the Daily Princetonian: Clinicians in the University’s mental and behavioral health Exclusive Provider Network (EPN), a network of local clinicians subsidized by the University to provide counseling to Princeton students, will see cuts to their rates for their services. Starting August 1, rates will decrease by 48 percent for psychiatric diagnostic evaluations, and by 7 percent for 60-minute follow-up sessions. The reduced rates will be lower than 2019 EPN rates for most services and treatments.

This decision comes amid budget cuts driven by lower endowment return projections. Of the roughly 228 clinicians currently in the EPN, 76 percent have confirmed they will remain in the network for the upcoming year...

Full story at https://www.dailyprincetonian.com/article/2026/06/princeton-news-adpol-slashes-reimbursement-rates-external-mental-health-clinicians-epn.

Straws in the Wind - Part 375

From the Daily Princetonian: The Princeton University Investment Company (PRINCO) has ended its divestment from publicly traded oil and gas companies, according to a letter from PRINCO President Vincent Tuohey published Monday. The University will maintain its previously-established dissociation from the thermal coal and tar sands portions of the fossil fuel industry. PRINCO, which manages the University’s endowment, has set a net-zero emissions goal for the University endowment portfolio by 2046, according to the letter, which is the same year as the University’s campus net-zero target. As a step towards achieving a net-zero endowment, PRINCO previously committed to eliminating all of its holdings in publicly traded fossil fuel companies in 2022. At this time, the University dissociated from 90 fossil fuel companies involved in thermal coal and tar sands, as mandated by the Board of Trustees.

In the letter, Tuohey described the change in divestment policy as part of PRINCO’s “revised approach” to balancing support for the University’s research mission and its commitment to climate sustainability...

Full story at https://www.dailyprincetonian.com/article/2026/06/princeton-news-adpol-princo-discontinues-divestment-publicly-traded-oil-gas-companies.

Straws in the Wind - Part 374

From the Daily Princetonian: The University has implemented rules prohibiting reporters from recording, photographing, or filming faculty meetings. The new rules went into effect from the May 11 faculty meeting, marking a departure from past practices in which reporters were able to record meetings for transcription and take photographs of the Faculty Room inside Nassau Hall. 

The new rules also limit the number of reporters to two per campus publication and stipulate that reporters notify the Office of Communications of their attendance at least 24 hours in advance of meetings. Campus press must also obtain media credentials before each faculty meeting. Campus radio remains permitted to broadcast faculty meetings, though no campus radio station currently broadcasts the meetings...

Full story at https://www.dailyprincetonian.com/article/2026/06/princeton-news-faculty-meeting-recording-policy-campus-press-ivy-league.

Straws in the Wind - Part 364

From Inside Higher Ed: The National Science Foundation has reversed its recent freeze on new grant funding for Duke, Harvard and Yale Universities, Nature reported. Limitations on new grants for Princeton University, however, remain in effect. The reversal took place on May 28, one day after Nature published a story detailing a funding pause for all four institutions. 

An NSF database showed that on April 9 the accounts of the four universities had been marked with a note that said, “Future Awards to Organization on Hold,” Nature reported. As of Thursday, the note had been removed from every account except Princeton’s. So far this year, the number of new grants received by each institution is down significantly from previous years, but that seems poised to change; “a few grants” have already been released to researchers at both Harvard and Duke since the freeze was lifted, an NSF staff member told Nature...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2026/06/01/nsf-reverses-funding-freeze-duke-harvard-and-yale.

Money Blocked

From Inside Higher Ed: The Trump administration’s use of funding freezes to take aim at higher education institutions continues as the National Science Foundation has placed limits on new grants for four highly selective universities, Nature reported. As of April 9, the NSF has placed a “hold” on future awards to Duke, Harvard, Princeton and Yale Universities, according to internal agency documents obtained by Nature. Since then, minimal new funding has been allocated to those institutions, the documents show.

In 2024, the four received a combined total of 218 new NSF grants, for which researchers are still able to access funds, Nature reported. But this fiscal year they only received 13 new grants, with none awarded to scientists at Duke or Harvard since April 9... It is unclear how long the limitations will last or why those four institutions were singled out...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2026/05/29/nsf-freezes-new-funding-4-institutions.

Note that while litigation over freezes of existing grants tends to be successful, it is more difficult to deal with delays or just negative decisions on new grants or grant renewals using litigation.

Straws in the Wind - Part 348

From the Daily Princetonian: All in-person examinations at Princeton will be proctored starting July 1, representing the most significant change to the honor system since it was established in 1893. The faculty passed a proposal requiring instructor supervision... with one opposing vote. The historic vote was the culmination of months of deliberation within the administration and student governing bodies about how to address increasing concerns over academic integrity violations, including the proliferation of AI usage. The proposal cleared a full faculty vote as the final of three required rounds of approval, having already been passed unanimously by the Committee on Examinations and Standing and the Faculty Advisory Committee on Policy.

According to the policy proposal, previously sent by Dean of the College Michael Gordin to the Faculty Advisory Committee and included in Monday’s meeting notes, instructors will remain present in exam rooms “as a witness to what happens,” but are instructed not to interfere with students. If a suspected Honor Code violation occurs, proctors will document their observations and submit a report to the student-run Honor Committee, where they may later testify under the same standards used for other witnesses... 

The proposa... points to a growing reluctance among students to report peers directly. The proposal claims that anonymous reporting of allegations has increased in recent years, fueled by fears of “doxxing or shaming among their peer groups” online... 

Full story at https://www.dailyprincetonian.com/article/2026/05/princeton-news-adpol-proctoring-in-person-examinations-passed-faculty-133-years-precedent.

Straws in the Wind - Part 344

From the Daily Princetonian: Princeton will not have to pay any net investment income tax on returns from its $36.4 billion endowment, a University investment official said at a private event in January, after a recent expansion of its undergraduate financial aid program left the University below a 3,000 tuition-paying student threshold to qualify for taxation. Experts had projected that the new tax on wealthy university endowments — enacted under H.R. 1, the omnibus tax and spending bill passed by congressional Republicans in July 2025 — would have cost Princeton roughly $180 million annually. The 8 percent endowment tax was predicted to impose one of the country’s highest university tax burdens on Princeton, which currently enrolls 9,100 undergraduate and graduate students. According to University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83, recent widespread budget cuts have been driven by decreased long-term endowment projections — growth estimates that likely would have been further eroded if the University were required to pay the tax.

...In July, amid several Trump administration attacks on higher education, Congress set the 8 percent tax rate for universities with over $2 million in endowment funds per student and over 3,000 tuition-paying students. At around $3.9 million in endowment funds per student, Princeton was expected to be subject to the tax, and many of its peer institutions are still likely to pay hundreds of millions annually. 

...Emeritus Professor of Economics Burton Malkiel GS ’64, who has publicly written about how universities benefit from the illiquid assets of endowments, called the University’s endowment tax strategy a “brilliant response to a punitive and discriminatory tax.” The expansion of financial aid “increases our income and produces much-needed student support,” he wrote to the ‘Prince.’ ...

Full story at https://www.dailyprincetonian.com/article/2026/05/princeton-news-adpol-university-spared-endowment-tax-financial-aid-millions-princo.

Straws in the Wind - Part 333

From the Daily Princetonian: Winter session is dead. Some student employees and program staff have been laid off. The current meal swap system will be decommissioned starting next fall. Amid an increasingly uncertain fiscal and political environment, University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 announced in his annual “State of the University” letter that budgetary and operational changes would unfold over several years, following departmental budget cuts and a hiring freeze implemented last year. He added that these budgetary constraints will at times require “targeted, and in some cases, deeper, reductions over a multiyear period.”

The University recently lowered its long-term endowment return expectations from 10.2 percent to 8 percent annually, and an endowment value of $11.3 billion lower than past forecasts was predicted for the next decade. At the same time, the Trump administration has passed higher taxes on large college endowments, frozen research funding, and targeted diversity programs and other key pillars of higher education. Against this backdrop, University units have cut programming, employee benefits, and library hours. These are just a few of the changes made through several rounds of budget cuts beginning in Spring 2025...

Full story at https://projects.dailyprincetonian.com/Princeton-budget-cuts-tracker/.

Disability Creep

There has been increasing concern about the rising proportion of undergraduate students claiming disabilities on college campuses. Most of the UC campuses show that trend. Disabled students can receive accommodations on tests and other assignments. But the rise seems prominent in a number of private universities. The San Francisco Chronicle has a search option for looking at the trend.

From Fall 2013 to Fall 2023:

• Stanford (top of the list in Fall 2023): 7% to 38.2%
• Dartmouth: 7% to 15.8%
• Cornell: 6% to 21.6%
• Harvard: no more than 3% to 21.0%
• Brown: 10% to 22.0%
• Yale: 8% to 19.8%
• Columbia: 6% to 14.3%
• Princeton: no more than 3% to 15.5%
• U of Pennsylvania: 6% to 15.0%
• USC: no more than 3% to 13.0%
• CalTech: no more than 3% to 11.7%

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*https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/stanford-disabled-disability-student-21361362.php.

Straws in the Wind - Part 278

From the Daily Princetonian: University faculty and administrators will consider a proposal to require proctoring for all in-person examinations, which would mark a departure from the traditionally unproctored exam format under the Honor Code. If passed, the policy could take effect as early as next fall, according to Honor Committee members. The proposal was discussed in a meeting between Honor Committee leadership and Dean of the College Michael Gordin on Wednesday, Feb. 25. Although conversations about proctored examinations have been ongoing in recent years, the new policy is now set to enter a multi-stage faculty and administrative review before it can come to a vote by the faculty. Currently, only individual and small group examinations are proctored.

The tradition of not proctoring has existed since the introduction of Princeton’s honor system in 1893. The system has relied on student self-governance and mutual accountability. Students pledge both to refrain from infractions of academic dishonesty and to report any breaches of the Constitution they witness. 

“The prohibition on proctoring is formalized in ‘Rules and Procedures of the Faculty.’ Any change to that policy would have to pass through the relevant committees and be voted on by the full faculty,” Gordin wrote in a statement to The Daily Princetonian. “Since that process has not begun, I cannot predict when it would conclude.”

...An expansion of proctoring already occurred earlier this academic year, according to Makuc. In November, faculty were instructed to proctor all individual and small-group exams, including make-up exams, exams taken by student-athletes while traveling, and exams taken with disability accommodations. The University’s consideration of the new policy stems from broader concerns about academic integrity and enforcement...

Full story at https://www.dailyprincetonian.com/article/2026/03/princeton-news-adpol-proctoring-honor-code-in-person-exams.

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From Inside Higher Ed: Indiana’s governor has signed into law a bill that aims to eliminate all academic programs at the state’s public universities and at Ivy Tech Community College that fail a new federal earnings test. Congress created the Do No Harm test when it passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act last summer. The test, which hasn’t yet taken effect, will generally require programs to show their graduates earn more on average than high school diploma earners (just over $35,000 in Indiana), or else students in those programs will no longer be able to receive federal student loans. Graduate and professional program earnings would further have to exceed bachelor's degree earnings.

But Indiana’s Senate Bill 199 will make failing that test even more punitive in the Hoosier State. It adopts the federal test into state law and says programs that fail it must close entirely—unless the state Commission for Higher Education, a group of gubernatorial appointees, grants an exemption...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2026/03/10/indiana-governor-signs-bill-end-low-earning-degrees.

Straws in the Wind - Part 270

From the Daily Princetonian: In a series of... memos, the University informed faculty and non-union staff of raise cuts and benefit reductions for the coming fiscal year, with a decrease in personnel also on the horizon. The adjustments to employee pay and benefits came shortly after the annual State of the University letter from University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 reported that the University would be tightening its budget primarily due to declining long-term endowment return expectations and continued uncertainty over federal funding. Eisgruber discussed some of the raise cuts at his annual Council of the Princeton University Community town hall... 

Provost Jennifer Rexford ’91 and Executive Vice President Katie Callow-Wright sent an email obtained by the ‘Prince’ to employees informing them that benefits would also be cut. “We want everyone to be aware that some reduction to the University’s generous benefits structure is coming,” Rexford and Callow-Wright wrote. “Overall headcount at the University will decline as we reallocate resources to protect our highest priority areas,” they also warned. The email did not specify whether this referred to layoffs or not renewing positions after retirements...

Full story at https://www.dailyprincetonian.com/article/2026/02/princeton-news-broadfocus-u-cut-employee-benefits-raise-reductions-mixed-reactions.

Straws in the Wind - Part 269

From the Daily Princetonian: Artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude have started influencing the way that universities and institutions of higher education operate. AI has not only changed the ways in which professors navigate their classrooms, but it has also upended long-established systems for exams. This change is well-illustrated by the economics department, which has begun administering only in-person final exams...

The ‘Prince’ analyzed the final assessment schedules for the last three semesters to better understand how the University is trying to tackle concerns relating to cheating and AI. The number of take-home exams has been continuously declining over the last three semesters. In Spring 2025, they were more popular than in-person finals, but just a year later, they have become scarce as generative AI has become more commonplace, with only 49 take-home exams being administered this semester...

The number of take-home exams have more than halved in number since this time last year, from 168 to 49. There were more take-home exams in the Spring 2025 semester than there were in-person finals. Now, there are less than 50 take-home exams scheduled. From Spring to Fall 2025, the number of in-person exams has increased by over 50 percent. The number of papers, projects, and presentations have increased by 61 exams in the span of only a year...

Full story at https://www.dailyprincetonian.com/article/2026/02/princeton-data-end-of-take-home.

Straws in the Wind - Part 268

From the Chronicle of Higher Education: ...New York University will begin a new initiative aimed at getting students to spend less time on their phones. It’s called NYU IRL (short for “in real life”), and it spans the university’s Manhattan, Abu Dhabi, and Shanghai campuses, where students will be enticed to enter “device-free zones" ...NYU IRL, which Linda G. Mills, NYU’s president, announced earlier this year, includes new resources for faculty to try “device optimization” in their classrooms, such as making it a featured topic in the university’s faculty learning exchange week, which is happening now. NYU will also host in-person events like a “supper club” in its dining halls.

To mark the beginning of the effort, NYU professor and author Jonathan Haidt is hosting a “fireside chat” early next month to talk through his bestselling book, The Anxious Generation. The 2024 book argues that the rise in smartphone usage in childhood over the last decade has contributed directly to the rise in mental illness in younger generations. Mills cites Haidt’s findings as a major inspiration for the new program...

Full story at https://www.chronicle.com/article/nyu-wants-students-to-put-down-their-phones-will-they.

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From the NY Times: The Defense Department has decided to cut academic ties with nearly two dozen top universities and think tanks as part of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s campaign against what he calls anti-American values and “wokeness.” ...In a video published to social media* ...Mr. Hegseth denounced the institutions in blistering language, calling them politically liberal institutions with “wicked ideologies” that were indoctrinating U.S. service members. He said that, beginning in the new school year in September, the Defense Department would ban service members from attending those universities.

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*https://x.com/secwar/status/2027474502876070386.

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In addition to Harvard, which was banned earlier this month, the Defense Department said the banned institutions would include the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton, Yale, Brown, Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, Columbia, George Washington, Tufts, St. Louis and Carnegie Mellon, as well as the College of William & Mary, Middlebury College and Queen’s University in Ontario.

When Mr. Hegseth cut ties with Harvard, it was seen as part of a wider pressure campaign by the Trump administration to force the university to cut a deal with the government. But some of the universities that were banned on Friday have already agreed to a laundry list of demands from the Trump administration as part of an effort to remake the culture of higher education. The Defense Department said it would also cut ties with seven high-profile think tanks in Washington known for their defense and national security analysis: the Center for Strategic and International Studies, New America, the Brookings Institution, the Atlantic Council, the Center for a New American Security, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Henry L. Stimson Center...

Mr. Hegseth, who served as an infantry officer with the National Guard, graduated from Harvard’s Kennedy School in 2013 with a master’s degree in public policy... The Defense Department said it was considering replacing the programs with those at institutions including state universities and conservative Christian schools like Liberty University and Hillsdale College...

Full story at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/28/us/politics/pentagon-universities-think-tanks.html.

Straws in the Wind - Part 254

From the Daily Princetonian: Princeton’s music department announced a series of program reductions following the annual State of the University letter, which anticipated across-the-board fiscal tightening. Starting in August, the department will eliminate the position of Trenton Arts at Princeton Program Coordinator, international touring of ensembles, and Richardson Chamber Players under Princeton University Concerts. 

These cuts are part of a “multi-year process of ongoing and evolving reductions to our programmatic and operational expenses,” according to an email sent to department members on behalf of Daniel Trueman, chair of the music department. The University plans to tighten its belt due to changing expectations for its endowment returns, which fund about two-thirds of the total operating budget...

Full story at https://www.dailyprincetonian.com/article/2026/02/princeton-news-stlife-music-programs-cut-new-university-budget-reductions.

Told you so

 

When it's all over, maybe there is some budding Arthur Miller out there who can write a play. Blog readers know what yours truly thinks:

https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2026/02/epstein-in-academialand.html.

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Or direct to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUzQImywFX0.

Straws in the Wind - Part 240

From Inside Higher Ed: George Washington University is pausing admissions to five Ph.D. programs for fall 2026, citing financial hardships. According to social media posts, applicants to the programs received emails last week alerting them that the programs “will not be reviewing applications for the 2026–2027 academic year.” The emails went on to say that their application fees would be refunded and offered them the opportunity to be considered for master’s programs instead. The Ph.D. programs affected are in clinical psychology, anthropology, human paleobiology, political science and mathematics. A university spokesperson attributed the pauses to financial difficulties.

...The suspensions follow other instances of high-profile institutions slashing admissions to Ph.D. programs due to budget concerns, including Boston University, the University of Chicago and Harvard University. In a recent Faculty Senate meeting, GWU president Ellen Granberg asked the university’s schools and divisions to prepare “budget contingency plans” amid declines in applications from international students, the student newspaper, The GW Hatchet, reported. International students accounted for about 13 percent of the institution’s enrollment this fall, a decrease from the previous year...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/students/graduate-students-and-postdocs/2026/01/26/george-washington-u-pauses-admissions-5-phd.

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From the Daily Princetonian: ...The University [has] released its annual Report of the Treasurer. Following a tumultuous year for higher education across the country, the report emphasizes the University’s lab partnerships with federal departments, close ties to active-duty soldiers and veterans, and involvement in AI and public service. The report, entitled “In the Nation’s Service,” comes after approximately $200 million in research-specific funding was suspended last year by the Trump administration, then partially reinstated over the summer... 

Princeton spent $283 million in total financial aid contributions in 2024–25 and saw its largest ever number of Pell Grant recipients. Most families that make less than $250,000 per year pay no tuition. The University is potentially facing a new 8 percent endowment tax from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which applies to universities with endowments of over $2 million per student and a tuition-paying population of at least 3,000. 

With a projected increase of financial aid spending to $327 million in 2025–26, there is a possibility that the University will avoid the endowment tax by having under 3,000 tuition-paying students. The University has previously declined to comment on the endowment tax and the number of students that pay tuition...

Full story at https://www.dailyprincetonian.com/article/2026/01/princeton-news-adpol-2025-treasurer-report-emphasizes-princeton-nations-service.

SAT vs. ACT vs. UC

Back in pandemic days, UC dropped the admissions requirement for submission of standardized tests: The SAT and ACT. Other universities did, too, but reconsidered and have been moving back. At the time the decision was made at UC, as blog readers will know, the Academic Senate produced a study indicating that the tests, as used in conjunction with other factors, was useful.

As blog readers will know, a report from UC-San Diego - which received a lot of (not favorable) publicity - highlighted major deficiencies in incoming students, particularly in math.*

A recent Washington Post story noted competition between SAT and ACT and also pointed to the fact that other prestigious universities have moved back toward testing in admissions:

Princeton University... announced plans to drop its test-optional policy in October, leaving Columbia University as the only Ivy League school that doesn’t require test scores. Most colleges temporarily dropped their testing requirements during the pandemic, but some have since reinstated the mandates.

...More than 90 percent of four-year colleges are either test-blind or test-optional. But since the pandemic, more students have taken the test to get an upper-hand in admissions. A majority of students who filed applications through the Common Application by Jan. 1 included their test scores...**

In short, students are taking the tests, even if UC doesn't want to look at them. More selective universities are coming back to considering the tests as part of the admissions process. But there has been no move at UC or at the Regents to revisit the issue. Possibly, the lack of movement at UC is just a sense that to go back would suggest a mistake was made before. But other universities seem able to admit error and reverse direction. Possibly, there is paralysis at UC because of the ongoing conflict with the Trump administration. But given the billion dollar demand from the feds, it seems that no serious negotiations are going to be possible for a long time. Everything at UC can't be put on hold, therefore, awaiting some resolution. 

The alternative is to start offering and requiring remedial courses to make up for K-12 deficiencies. Doing so would lower graduation rates and involve expenditures at a time when potential budget stringencies are looming.

It's time to revisit a questionable decision.

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*https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2025/11/not-everyone-is-prepared.html.

**https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2026/01/18/standardized-test-popularity/.

Straws in the Wind - Part 230

From Bloomberg MSN: For the second straight year, some highly selective colleges are reporting lower Black and Hispanic enrollment than before the Supreme Court ruled against racial preferences in admissions. In a Bloomberg analysis of data from 27 elite schools, all but two reported a smaller share of Black freshmen in fall 2025 than in fall 2023, the last class admitted before the affirmative action ban. Some 21 schools saw reduced Hispanic enrollment among first-year students over that period. At the same time, more than half the schools reported equal or higher Asian enrollment in the 2025 freshman class compared to 2023. The lawsuits that led to the Supreme Court decision on affirmative action argued that the practice discriminated against Asian applicants to Harvard University and the University of North Carolina.

The figures show the ongoing impact the affirmative action ban has had on diversity on elite campuses. And as the White House threatens to block access to federal funding for schools it says are using racial preferences in admissions, the data may help deflect scrutiny from the Trump administration.

The continued decline in Black students was especially stark. At Harvard, Black students comprised around 11% of the freshman class this year, down 3 points from 2024. The California Institute of Technology saw Black students plunge from about 5% of the freshman class in fall 2024 to 1.6% this academic year. Princeton, where Black enrollment held steady at around 9% in 2024, saw that share drop to 5% for the class that entered this past fall...

Full story at https://www.msn.com/en-us/education-and-learning/higher-education/college-racial-diversity-drops-again-as-trump-ramps-up-scrutiny/ar-AA1UcUWo.

Why folks are nervous - Part 2

As blog readers will know, there is nervousness on campus about a move by Murphy Hall to consolidate the various computer systems at UCLA into a single "One IT" system. The Senate has passed a resolution about this matter.

Apart from concerns about individual privacy, etc., there is the record of failures to seamlessly install new computer systems. Blog readers will know about the Regents ongoing lawsuit against contractors involved in a system that was supposed to handle pension payments.

The Chronicle of Higher Education recently had a piece about why universities push for centralized, unified computer systems:

Colleges now exist in a world where one human slip-up or system vulnerability can lead to a disastrous data breach that impacts thousands of people’s personal data. In the past two months, the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University, and Princeton University have fallen victim to hacks. Earlier in 2025, so did Columbia University, Dartmouth College, and New York University. Those recent headlines have made higher ed’s cybersecurity infrastructure seem particularly inadequate... The reality, tech experts say, is that colleges are constantly being bombarded with cyberattacks. Powered by artificial intelligence, these strikes have become more sophisticated. And there’s only so much that campus IT departments can do...

A fundamental problem for higher ed is that the best IT strategies involve pushing for more centralized control of technology use, which often doesn’t go over well on a college campus. Especially at large private institutions, different schools or departments, such as the business school and the medical school, are more likely to have their own IT teams, said [Anita] Nikolich, [director of research and technology innovation at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign] who used to be executive director of IT infrastructure at the University of Chicago. “When you have so many independent IT departments … that itself is a huge risk factor,” she said.

Universities typically resist centralization, Nikolich said, in the name of academic freedom. “It’s a mentality of, if I become centralized and shared, my faculty are not going to be allowed to do what they need to do for their research,” she said...

Full story at https://www.chronicle.com/article/why-cyberattacks-in-higher-ed-keep-proliferating.

What yours truly gathers from the above is that when university computer folks get together in whatever forums they do, central control is now a thing.